Digitize this book! : the politics of new media, or why we need open access now

312 Pages·2008·2.03 MB·English

by  Gary Hall

DIGITIZE THIS BOOK!
Electronic Mediations
Katherine Hayles, Mark Poster, and Samuel Weber, Series Editors
24 Digitize This Book! The Politics of New Media, or Why We Need
Open Access Now Gary Hall
23 Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet Lisa Nakamura
22 Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools Byron Hawk, David M. Rieder,
and Ollie Oviedo, Editors
21 The Exploit: A Theory of Networks Alexander R. Galloway and
Eugene Thacker
20 Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overfl ow
Victoria Vesna, Editor
19 Cyberspaces of Everyday Life Mark Nunes
18 Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture Alexander R. Galloway
17 Avatars of Story Marie-Laure Ryan
16 Wireless Writing in the Age of Marconi Timothy C. Campbell
15 Electronic Monuments Gregory L. Ulmer
14 Lara Croft: Cyber Heroine Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky
13 The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory Thomas Foster
12 Déjà Vu: Aberrations of Cultural Memory Peter Krapp
11 Biomedia Eugene Thacker
10 Avatar Bodies: A Tantra for Posthumanism Ann Weinstone
9 Connected, or What It Means to Live in the Network Society Steven Shaviro
8 Cognitive Fictions Joseph Tabbi
7 Cybering Democracy: Public Space and the Internet Diana Saco
6 Writings Vilém Flusser
5 Bodies in Technology Don Ihde
4 Cyberculture Pierre Lévy
3 What’s the Matter with the Internet? Mark Poster
2 High Techne¯: Art and Technology from the Machine Aesthetic
to the Posthuman R. L. Rutsky
1 Digital Sensations: Space, Identity, and Embodiment in
Virtual Reality Ken Hillis
Digitize This Book!
The Politics of New Media,
or Why We Need Open Access Now
GARY HALL
Electronic Mediations 24
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis • London
Earlier versions of some of the material in this book have been previously published
as “The Cultural Studies e-Archive Project (Original Pirate Copy),” Culture Machine
5 (2003); “Digitize This,” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 26, no. 1
(January–March 2004); and “IT, Again: How to Build an Ethical Virtual Institution,”
inExperimenting: Essays with Samuel Weber, eds. Simon Morgan Wortham and Gary
Hall (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007).
Copyright 2008 by Gary Hall
Produced by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services
Copyediting by Nancy Evans
Design and composition by Yvonne Tsang
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Hall, Gary, 1962–
Digitize this book! : the politics of new media, or why we need open access now /
Gary Hall.
p. cm. — (Electronic mediations ; 24)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8166-4870-2 (acid-free paper) — isbn 978-0-8166-4871-9 (pbk. : acid-
free paper)
1. Open access publishing. 2. Scholarly electronic publishing. 3. Communication
in learning and scholarship—Technological innovations. 4. Internet—Political
aspects. I. Title.
Z286.O63H35 2008
070.5´7973—dc22 2008011042
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction Another University Is Possible 1
Metadata I Notes on Creating Critical Computer Media 19
I. INTERNETHICS
1 Why All Academic Research and Scholarship
Should Be Made Available in Online Open-
Access Archives—Now! 39
2 Judgment and Responsibility in the Wikipedia Era 55
Metadata II Print This! 80
3 IT, Again; or, How to Build an Ethical Institution 88
II. HYPERPOLITICS
4 Antipolitics and the Internet 105
Metadata III The Specifi city of New Media 151
5 HyperCyberDemocracy 167
Conclusion Next-Generation Cultural Studies? 187
Metadata IV The Singularity of New Media 208
Notes 217
Bibliography 271
Index 292
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m going to keep this short and simple. A lot of people have provided
me with help and support of one kind or another during the writing
of this book. Among them, I’d especially like to thank Doug Armato,
Clare Birchall, Dave Boothroyd, Paul Bowman, Timothy Clark, Jeremy
Gilbert, Henry Giroux, Steve Green, Lawrence Grossberg, Ian Hall,
Sigi Jöttkandt, Kembrew McLeod, Angela McRobbie, David Ottina,
Paul Patton, Mark Poster, Nina Sellars, Steven Shaviro, Stelarc, Sandy
Thatcher, Joanna Zylinska.
This one is for Ian (the original digitizer).
vii
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INTRODUCTION
Another University Is Possible
University-Generated Media
What kind of university is desirable, or even possible, in the age of dig-
ital reproduction: CDs, DVDs, cell phones, computers, laptops, print-
ers, the World Wide Web, the Internet, e-mails, text and picture mes-
sages, e-books, open-source and free software, blogs, Google, MP3 fi les,
BitTorrent, podcasts, Bluetooth, Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr,
YouTube, Second Life, Kindle, and so on?1 It is an understatement to
say that many of the changes introduced in the university in recent
years have met with a fairly unfavorable response from both academics
and nonacademics alike.2 These changes include:
• The establishment of an internal market within higher educa-
tion, as different institutions, and even different courses within
the same institutions, are forced to compete nationally and inter-
nationally for limited resources in terms of faculty, staff, students,
funding, and more
• The increase in student numbers, as well as faculty adminis-
trative, bureaucratic, and managerial responsibilities and work-
loads
• The further concentration of research in a small number of
older, prestigious (some would say more conservative), “research-
intensive” institutions: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, Cam-
bridge, Melbourne, and so forth3
• The declining security of university employment via the increase
in fi xed-term and hourly paid contracts—something which,
alongside the concentration of research in fewer institutions, is
turning many academics into “precarious” and “semi-precarious”
proletarianized laborers, often forced to work for free both within
1